French Gov't Gains Support in P2P Fight

The French government has become more aggressive in moving to block attempts by its legislature to legalize peer-to-peer downloads, with the country's Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy having harsh words for file sharers after a meeting with popular French artists.

The original bill aimed to punish those who break laws by copying CDs and DVDs and then uploading the content to the Internet. However, legislative debate quickly turned contentious when several members of the body added amendments that would essentially make P2P networks legal, as long as a small fee is paid as a tax.

Opponents of the amendments said there was no easy way to ensure the money collected would make it back to copyright holders, and the government soon withdrew the bill altogether. A revised version, with lesser penalties and lacking the article with the P2P amendments, was resubmitted Tuesday.

Left-wing opposition MPs joined several members from the ruling party in attempting to have the amendments added to other parts of the bill. They were unsuccessful, however, as supporters of the government's position blocked those efforts.

Debate is scheduled to continue through the rest of this week, with a vote set for March 15.

"Young people must have the right to be able to make private copies, but industrial illegal downloading is theft," Sarkozy was quoted as saying to the assembled group by Agence France Presse. "And as for me, I am not here to accept the idea of theft. The right of ownership, copyright, must be respected."

Some artists even suggested that P2P related sites be banned altogether in France, similar to what is done in China.